(David Mack) The Washington Post’s
Cecilia
Kang wrote an interesting piece in Sunday’s paper that explores both the
growing role of social networking tools in policy work and a perceived lack of
transparency from those doing the posting.
The story
includes several examples of company representatives who mix personal and
professional information in their private data streams. The question Kang seems to be asking is
whether or not policy oriented posts should be regulated.
Lobbying activity is relatively
well defined and regulated. If
you are communicating directly with elected members or regulators your actions
(and the specific topics of conversation) are supposed to be captured by
lobbying disclosure forms.
Similarly, paying for events (like a round of golf) that provide
exclusive personal access to the same officials are closely watched and
reportable.
But should communications that speak to a non-targeted,
broad audience be treated in the same fashion? I’d suggest we tread very carefully here.
There are really three flavors of posts to consider; individuals
posting about news or opinion, organizations (i.e coalitions, companies)
posting news or opinion, and organizations mobilizing followers (i.e. sign a
petition on net neutrality).
I doubt the latter two options would be in danger of
confusing an audience. If you’ve
subscribed to an organization’s twitter stream, you proactively decided to
receive information from that source and will know what their agenda is.
In the case of individuals, if anything, a permanent (and
searchable) record of tweets provides a welcome new layer of transparency that
would have been unimaginable ten years ago. I’m in the “more information is good” camp and having the
ability to search through an individual’s musings on a given topic is a welcome
way to familiarize myself with their background and motivating principles.
While it’s good to ask hard questions about how folks try to
pull the levers of power, I think we can let our social networking friends off
the hook for now. After all, those
tweets have a long and public shelf life.
Certainly a lot longer than comments made in a closed meeting or over
cocktails at the 19th hole.
